The existence of a secretive group of enemies plotting against President Donald Trump since his first presidential campaign and the subsequent Russia investigation, on through his 2020 election loss and many criminal indictments, has been an article of faith for the MAGA movement. Trump’s fixation on gaining revenge against this supposed cabal of Democratic officials and their so-called “deep state” allies lurks behind many of the biggest changes to the Justice Department and FBI in his second term. For months, federal prosecutors and investigators have been tasked with cracking the “grand conspiracy case,” which would tie together a set of disparate threads that all lead back to Trump’s need for vengeance.
But as The New York Times reported Friday, an array of factors has stymied those efforts. The largest issue, as the Times put it, is that the people working the case “have found it difficult, and time-consuming, to meet the standards of evidence and jurisdiction needed to prove anything close to a conspiracy in a court of law.” And everyone who touches the “grand conspiracy” case is forced to keep running headfirst into walls with little to show for it or be shown the door.
Everyone who touches the “grand conspiracy” case is forced to keep running headfirst into walls with little to show for it or be shown the door.
The administration’s rush to find facts that might support Trump’s dark fantasy has led the Justice Department to invert the usual rules of letting conclusions follow from evidence. People who disagree with this method have been pushed to the side. The Times described Maria Medetis Long as “a respected national security prosecutor in Miami, who approached the inquiry with an open mind.” But when she concluded that the evidence didn’t support prosecuting former CIA Director John Brennan for his role in helping open the Russia probe, she was removed from the case.
An old Trump ally, former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova, was tapped to lead the Southern District of Florida-based investigation instead. But last month, a reported difference in strategy saw DiGenova quit that role before Attorney General Todd Blanche could fire him, as he believed was coming. According to the Times, DiGenova, “who wanted to take aim at big-name targets, told one associate he believed that Mr. Blanche was less interested in proving the conspiracy to destroy the president than in securing rapid box-checking indictments of low-level players to keep Mr. Trump happy.” Blanche in turn reportedly thought the 81-year-old diGenova was “too scattered, too combative and too slow” to be effective.
DiGenova also apparently blamed the lack of resources provided to him. It’s true that not many career lawyers were open to volunteering for the assignment, but plenty of federal staffers have been diverted from other areas to focus on the grand conspiracy case and its offshoots. FBI Director Kash Patel has talked up the supposed conspiracy for over a year now, including on Joe Rogan’s podcast; he also has pulled hundreds of agents into chasing phantom election fraud in Georgia, mulled possible prosecutions of his predecessor, James Comey, and pursued other disparate elements of this imagined plot.
Even some who might be open to the existence of a “grand conspiracy” have been bumped for not believing hard enough. One member of “a special squad assembled by F.B.I. leaders” was veteran agent Jack Eckenrode, who aided past special counsel probes of Comey and praised Patel when he was nominated. But according to the Times, Eckenrode “questioned a central premise of the investigation — that the court-approved search of [Mar-a-Lago in 2022] was a politically motivated intrusion that tainted everything that followed.” He reportedly pointed out that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has generally been a boon for Trump’s legal fortunes, had already ruled that the search was legal making it hard to use it as evidence of a conspiracy. Eckenrode was subsequently pulled from the case.
What would make Trump happiest is to be the most special boy in the world, subject of a vast government-wide effort to take him down.
While the barrage of flimsy charges and half-baked probes has been damaging to their targets, the leaders of Trump’s hunt are little better off than when they started. The president has already made an example of his first attorney general, Pam Bondi, for failing to deliver on her assignment. Blanche and Patel have been doing their best to avoid similar fates. But much like software being told to divide by zero, they are no closer to achieving the impossible.
Proving the existence of a grand conspiracy is only necessary because it would vindicate Trump’s victimhood. What would make him happiest is to be the most special boy in the world, subject of a vast government-wide effort to take him down. The reality is much more mundane: Trump is a narcissistic, greedy conman who feels his greatest achievement — winning the presidency — was never fully celebrated. In the face of accusations of helping Russia steal the 2016 election on his behalf, he proceeded to clumsily launch multiple botched efforts to rig the 2020 election.
There can be no proof of a conspiracy that never existed and whose alleged members were merely reacting to Trump’s own villainy. The president, the wellspring of his own ills, would rather craft an elaborate fantasy than admit his own faults. The emperor has no case but still expects his followers to stand before a judge and point out his robes’ finest details. And there can be no happy ending for any of them until the president sees his enemies in handcuffs.
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